All monitors display colours differently. The colours that you see on your digital monitor change slightly over time because the back light degrades. This causes the maximum brightness of the monitor to decrease slightly. To ensure a perfect colour match between film and monitor, you need to calibrate the monitor. By regularly calibrating the monitor, you ensure that the image on the screen is consistent from day to day by creating a uniform environment—the basis for the accurate display of image colours.

When you calibrate your monitor in Lustre, the image that you view is an exact replica of that which is sent to the output buffer—with the monitor calibration Lookup Table (LUT) applied on top. If you output to a log file, you will need a log-to-display LUT. If you output to a linear file, you will need a linear-to-display LUT. The calibration design ensures that any modifications you make to the image are as accurately displayed as technically possible—thus reducing the chance of downstream errors.

You can calibrate the monitor automatically or manually. You can also select and compare up to three Print LUTs (either 1D or 3D) to calibrate your system display with the output from the printer. This nullifies the need for subsequent printer light adjustments.

However, with a 3D LUT, you amalgamate the different stages of calibration into the LUT including the calibration of the monitor and the application of the Print LUT measurements.